


let nothing you dismay

by PreludeInZ



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Christmas, Cryoablation, Gen, Gift Fic, Sad, There Is A Season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:59:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/PreludeInZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>- Merry Christmas, Corgi-friend. Tumblr-buddy and writing-pal and PPS-partner, dark mirror of mine <3</p><p>- GUYS. GUYS!!!!!!! PRELUDE WROTE ME A PRESENT!!!! It takes place after the Christmas party in Cryoablation (but before Ilunga). damn. DAMN. SCOUT EMOTIONS. THANK YOU PRELUDE I LOVE IT <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	let nothing you dismay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pemm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Cryoablation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/990035) by [Pemm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm). 



> A late posting of a Christmas Gift for my good friend Pemm.

A quiet glass of cognac, one of his most treasured secrets. He had offered a glass to the Heavy, to the Medic. The most erudite of his companions, the ones who stood a narrow chance of appreciating it. A decent smoke, out of the cold and the wind and the ceaseless noise of wind and gunfire. Passably decent food, nothing like his preferred standard, but better than the tasteless, tinned garbage they’d been eating before the holiday.

But then, clutching a half-empty bottle of rum and stumbling a little as he crossed the threshold of the otherwise empty common room, Scout had to ruin it.

At least he didn’t notice Spy immediately. Spy sank further into the shadowy recesses of his armchair and stopped himself from sighing out loud. He swirled the cognac in his glass, moodily.

Whether Scout was ignoring him or ignorant to his presence entirely wasn’t apparent until he crossed to the wall opposite Spy’s chair, leaned against the wall, and slumped heavily to the floor. It was only then that he seemed to notice Spy, sat in his chair.

“…o-oh. Oh. M’sorry. Thought alla th’ team was’n bed. Gone t’bed. Couldn’t find no one. You been bein’ invisible? I guess, that’s just…it’s your job, though. I guess.” He’d lost the cap for the bottle he carried somewhere. The way he took a long, shuddering pull from it, Spy had the impression he didn’t intend to need it. The boy never had been able to hold his liquor. This, though. This was beyond the loud, obnoxious, generally amplified state he usually got himself into before damning the hangover and killing himself in whatever way he thought was funniest at the time, respawning to the amusement of the rest of the team. His eyes, his body language. His solitude. The way he sat for a few moments longer, like he wasn’t sure if he could stand again, and then looked up, slightly imploring. “Do…do I…I hafta go?”

Spy released the sigh he’d been holding back. “No. If you’re quiet.”

“M’ bein’ quiet.” He laughed, and it  _was_  quiet, strained. Another drink, one that suited someone a lot more wearied by the world than Scout was. “Didn’…ain’t wanna talk t’anyone. You can lemme ‘lone, s’fine.”

Maybe this was an early resolution for the New Year. Spy found himself, strangely, wanting to know more about what had brought this on. He raised his glass, inclined his head. “Merry Christmas. To your good health.”

Again with that laugh, haunting and hollow. “Aw god. Still? I ain’t got a watch.”

“Another twenty minutes.”

“…fuck. F-fuckin’…just…Christ.” Then a long silence, another incongruently ferocious pull of rum, one that set him coughing and choking on the heat of it. And quieter still, “I h-hate this  _stupid_  holiday. Hhh.  _Hate_ it.”

That had not been evident two hours ago. Spy pointed out as much, “I wouldn’t have known that. You seemed to be enjoying yourself. The holiday spirit, the team. Your horrific taste in liquor. Raw eggs and sugar. Still, God knows, we’ve needed the break.”

Scout had hunched up, pulled his limbs in close. Shaking his head, then mumbling, “Break, what break, ain’t gonna be good enough. Back at it ‘fore the year’s even out. I hate it here an’ I hate this job n’ I hate all  _you_ fuckin’ bastards. I h-hate bein’ cold  _all the time_ n’ I hate the food an’…a-and the  _fucking_  Pyro.” He hissed through his teeth at this last. “Fucking terrifyin’ fucking  _freak_. F-fuckin’ Engie, too, fuckin’ _Dell_. An’  _you_ , you spooky bastard, an’ just  _all_ you. All…of…y’lot of goddamn stupid fuckin’ sons’a bitches.” A little more venom, a little more fire, but mostly just drunken slurring.

Well. That was more like his usual dense, meandering speech. Spy wasn’t certain Scout knew what he was saying. Those were sometimes the most interesting things people could say. “ _Joyeux Noel_ ,” Spy responded dryly, and raised his glass again.

“Fuck off.”

Spy smiled in spite of himself. “I was here first. You’re extremely drunk.”

“No shit.”

“Why?” And then, because he’d always been vaguely curious. “The Pyro hasn’t ever done anything to you. It’s like being cruel to a child. Senseless. And petty.”

The question wasn’t supposed to elicit a response. Spy expected to be told, again, that he could fuck off. He hadn’t expected that Scout would shrink down further, away from him. “Why’m I scared’a her, then? H-him.  _It_. I ain’t…ain’t scared of _anything_. Nothin’ out  _here_ , I ain’t. Can’t die. S-so nothin’ left t’be scared of, nothin’. Ain’t anythin’ gets at  _me_. An’…fuckin’…it’s always  _at_ me. Stares at me, what the fuck. Shit. Half the time I just want h-her to lay  _off me_ , I’m  _tired_. It  _took_  everything, but  _why_ , though? I’m sick t’death of alla this shit too, I  _am_. It’s hard and I  _hate_ it. I want to go home. My brother… _brothers._  I miss my f-family, I want to go  _home_. I ain’t…ain’t seen my family in so damn long. You…ain’t any of you even  _got_ any families, not such that you miss ‘em, not so’s I can tell, an’ it…ain’t…” He broke off, stammering, stumbling over what he meant to say next. “Fair. It ain’t fair, wasn’t anythin’a what’d happened that was  _ever_ fair and I  _hate it_. I do.”

This was perhaps more than Spy had wanted to know. He attempted a long drag from the cigarette he had forgotten, but it had extinguished itself. He settled for the last of his drink instead, swallowed quickly, not savoured like it should have been. Spy had a distant sense of camaraderie towards his teammates, but he was further removed from any sense of loyalty than the rest of them. It was necessary, this ability to distance himself. He couldn’t tolerate it being threatened by a lonely, drunken child. “Scout, you’re past the point of making sense. Go to bed.”

“I don’t  _want to_.”

Well, no, he wouldn’t. That wasn’t his habit, not where drunkenness was concerned. “Respawn then.”

Another long swallow from the nearly empty bottle, more coughing, hideous choking. Something that sounded like a sob half swallowed back in the midst of it. “I’m  _tryin’_.”

Ah. Spy wasn’t often moved to pity. “ _Mere de Dieu_ , boy. Not like  _that_. You’ll pass out and suffocate on your own vomit. It will be hideous.”

Scout looked half gone already, and Spy had only just noticed, he was shaking, shivering. The room wasn’t cold. “Ain’t s’posed to m-make a mess inside. Demo said. Made fun’a me. Says I oughta take it like a man, he d-don’t…don’t…with. Nightmares. Things that happened that I can’t remember, an’ things I don’t  _wanna_ , I  _tried_ to say. I ain’t scared of hangovers, s’just I hate to  _remember_. Ain’t anyone ever  _listens_. I can’t. It’s dark. S’cold, an’ ain’t anyone out there. I don’t want to. I don’t, I  _can’t_. P-please. Lemme alone. It’s fine, I’ll j-just, I’ll  _go_. It ain’t bad. It won’t be bad, could be worse. Shot in the fuckin’ face, in the gut, that’s worse. Not that, not like that. Bleeding. O-or w-with the f-fire, fucking  _Pyro_. Lemme alone. I said, I _said._  Didn’t wanna talk. Y-you’re the bastard did all the talkin’, y’stupid invisible fucker. I-is it still even Christmas, even? Let me  _alone_.”

Spy rose from his chair. The boy was just babbling now, frantic and only semi-coherent. The bottle of rum was empty. It was almost certainly enough to have killed him, but it would take time. A long, slow death by poison, or a choking suffocation on vomit and bile. Scout didn’t resist when Spy crouched, pinned his narrow, shaking shoulders against the wall. Then the slender poniard, the blade he was never without. A quick, brutal thrust to the throat, a gloved hand clamped over Scout’s mouth, stifling the bubbling spurt of blood. Holding his hand there, holding the knife, until the body flickered and vanished around it.

Spy spent a long minute, deliberating whether he’d called an end to it for Scout’s sake or for his own. He considered another glass of cognac. At the end, Scout had said something he had very much understood. Not wanting to remember. Liquor was really not equal to the task of erasing what men like him—them—had to forget. And it felt wrong for the occasion, just past the stroke of midnight. Instead, with morbid and necessary purpose, Spy wiped the knife clean, and with a practiced flick of the wrist, slit his own throat.


End file.
